Congratulations to author Paul Seabright whose latest book The Divine Economy: How Religions Compete for Wealth, Power, and People has been longlisted for the 2024 FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award.
Religion in the twenty-first century is alive and well across the world, despite its apparent decline in North America and parts of Europe. Vigorous competition between and within religious movements has led to their accumulating great power and wealth. In The Divine Economy Seabright, a Professor at the Toulouse School of Economics, argues that religious movements are a special kind of business: they are platforms, bringing together communities of members who seek many different things from one another—spiritual fulfilment, friendship and marriage networks, even business opportunities. Their function as platforms, he contends, is what has allowed religions to consolidate and wield power.
Winner of the Bronze Medal in Business Commentary, Axiom Business Book Awards, The Divine Economy has been hailed as a “brilliant, challenging, and remarkably wide-ranging book” (Stephen Greenblatt) and “enlightening” (The Economist). In a recent review of the book for the Financial Times, Jane Shaw noted, “Seabright has produced an engaging and insightful book, which I found myself pondering long after I had read the last page.”
The prestigious FT and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award, previously the FT & McKinsey Award, is given annually to honor, “the author or authors of a book that provides the most compelling and enjoyable insights into critical business issues such as management, technology, climate, finance, and economics.”
Princeton University Press titles previously recognized by the prize include Minouche Shafik’s What We Owe Each Other: A New Social Contract for a Better Society (longlist, 2021) and Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism by Angus Deaton (shortlist, 2020). The Divine Economy is one of sixteen books selected from among more than 600 prize entries for this year’s longlist. Shortlisted titles will be announced September 17th, in New York.